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Monday, October 10, 2005
ENORMOUS CHANGES AT THE LAST MINUTE I know I said the Ladner drama would play out long and loud, but this is getting ridiculous. On the eve of tomorrow's (er, that'd be today's) trustee meeting, at which the group is expected to vote to oust Ladner, the chair of the board has suddenly resigned: Acknowledging that the board's "tortured deliberations" had "taken an inappropriately long time," Bains, in her statement, accused Ladner of fighting "every aspect" of the probe. She said he failed to produce documents and he claimed "that the University is contractually required to pay for every limousine ride to his gym to work out and every item of food and drink that he consumes, with no tax consequences to him." She seems to be resigning because she herself has become a divisive figure. Although it sounds as though her leaving won't make any difference to the vote's outcome, the equally important severance question might be more difficult to settle intelligently without her there. She sounds basically furious at Ladner and eager to reform the university radically: Bains recently proposed a plan that included annual audits of senior officers, student and faculty representatives on the board, more oversight and zero tolerance for financial and ethical lapses. No doubt this plays as far too much transparency-zeal to board members like David Carmen, reportedly a persistent defender of Ladner, and one of the more rancid Washington lobbyists. Part of the social world that swirls around the likes of Jack Abramoff, Carmen has enriched himself mightily by lobbying for the vile dictator of Kazakhstan: Carmen Group’s most notorious client is the corrupt regime of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. U.S. authorities are probing how $115 million from Amoco (see David Work), Phillips Petroleum and Mobil landed in the foreign bank accounts of Nazarbayev and his top officials. In a solicitation obtained by the Financial Times, Gerald Carmen [father of David] offered to burnish the regime’s U.S. image for just $1 million. |